GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, DC 20548

December 7, 2001

The Honorable Carl Levin

Chairman

The Honorable John Warner

Ranking Minority Member

Committee on Armed Services

United States Senate

The Honorable Bob Stump

Chairman

The Honorable Ike Skelton

Ranking Minority Member

Committee on Armed Services

House of Representatives

Subject: Nuclear Weapons: Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

In response to changes in the international climate in the late 1980s, the Department

of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Defense Programs altered its mission. Instead of

designing, testing, and building new nuclear weapons, the Office’s current mission—

known as the Stockpile Stewardship Program—is to maintain the safety and

reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile indefinitely without nuclear

testing. The Office now performs this mission as part of the National Nuclear

Security Administration (NNSA), a semiautonomous agency within DOE.1

Because the nation’s existing nuclear weapons are anticipated to remain in the

stockpile well beyond the expected life of their original design, one of the Office’s key

tasks will be to refurbish each of the nine weapon types through a comprehensive

stockpile life extension program. To accomplish this task, the Office of Defense

Programs will have to (1) determine which components will need refurbishing to

extend each weapon’s life; (2) design and produce the necessary refurbished

components; (3) install the components in the weapons; and (4) certify that the

changes do not adversely affect the safety and reliability of the stockpile. This

program will require a coordinated effort among the design laboratories and

production facilities that comprise the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

 1

 NNSA has responsibility for the nation’s nuclear weapons, nonproliferation, and naval reactors

programs.
2 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

To plan for the work of refurbishing the stockpile, the Congress, in section 3133 of

the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, required DOE to prepare

a comprehensive plan for the stockpile life extension program that was initially due

in January 2000 and was to be updated thereafter with each annual budget

submission. In requiring such a plan, the Congress sought to ensure that stockpile

life extension activities are planned in detail, coordinated fully, and executed within

fiscal resources. Section 3133 also required us to assess any plan that was prepared.

Because the Office of Defense Programs has yet to issue a final comprehensive plan

for the stockpile life extension program, we reviewed the status of the Office of

Defense Programs’ efforts to comply with the legislative requirement.

In summary, we found the following:

NNSA’s Office of Defense Programs is not developing a comprehensive stockpile life

extension program plan as called for in section 3133 of the National Defense

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000. The Office issued an “interim plan” in May

2000. However, this interim plan was essentially a description of the life extension

process and did not meet all of the requirements stated in section 3133. In response

to our evaluation of the interim plan, NNSA promised that it would provide the

information required under section 3133 as part of its budget request for fiscal year

2002.2

 However, nothing closely resembling such a plan was included in the budget

request. Instead, brief, often generalized information on weapon refurbishments was

included in various places in the budget request. The Office of Defense Programs is

not developing a comprehensive stockpile life extension program plan because

program officials were unsure of the need for such a plan, along the lines that the

legislative requirement envisions. They believe their fiscal year 2002 budget

submittal fulfills the spirit of the legislative requirement, and they have no current

plans to complete a comprehensive plan for the stockpile life extension program,

other than to again include certain high-level refurbishment-related information in the

fiscal year 2003 budget request. They pointed out that they are taking steps to

improve the planning processes for certain individual weapon life extension

programs as well as their overall planning processes; however, they have no plans to

integrate the individual life extension plans into an overall program. Nevertheless,

integrated planning is vital to successfully managing the interrelated activities of the

design laboratories and production plants and to making well-informed decisions in a

resource-constrained environment.

Background

The U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile consists of nine types of bombs and missile

warheads, numbering several thousand devices, that are currently either stored at

strategic military locations or deployed on military aircraft, missiles, or submarines.

A national complex of nuclear weapons design laboratories and production facilities,

run by NNSA, supports this stockpile. With the easing of tensions with the former

 2

 See Nuclear Weapons: Improved Management Needed to Implement the Stockpile Stewardship

Program Effectively (GAO-01-48, Dec. 14, 2000).
3 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

Soviet Union in the late 1980s, this complex has decreased in size. There are

currently four production sites in the DOE complex: the Pantex Plant in Amarillo,

Texas; the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Kansas City Plant in Kansas City,

Missouri; and the Savannah River Site in Savannah River, South Carolina. The

complex also includes the Nevada Test Site and three national laboratories that

design nuclear weapons: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California; Los

Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico; and Sandia National Laboratories, New

Mexico and California.

Within NNSA, the Office of Defense Programs is responsible for designing and

maintaining the stockpile. The Stockpile Stewardship Program is aimed at preserving

the core U.S. intellectual and technical competencies in nuclear weapons in a

nontesting environment.3

 This program includes:

• “Campaigns” to develop and maintain critical scientific knowledge about nuclear

weapons so that the Office can continue to certify the stockpile into the

foreseeable future;

• “Directed Stockpile Work” to maintain and extend the life of the stockpile; and

• “Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities” to ensure that infrastructure and

facilities are operational, safe, secure, in compliance, and ready to operate.

Directed Stockpile Work includes the mission of extending the life of existing nuclear

weapons through scientific study, simulation, and refurbishment. Weapon

refurbishment becomes necessary because nuclear warheads, even while in storage,

can deteriorate over time. Refurbishment involves design activities at the weapon

laboratories; transferring the weapons from Department of Defense (DOD) custody

to the Pantex Plant for disassembly; component rework and new component

fabrication at the Kansas City and Y-12 Plants; and finally, reassembly at the Pantex

Plant for return to DOD. The Office of Defense Programs currently is conducting a

life extension program for the W87 warhead and is embarking on life extensions for

several other weapons, including the B61 bomb, the W76 warhead, and the W80

warhead. The lifetimes of these weapons are to be extended up to 30 years beyond

the minimum life—generally about 20 years—for which they were originally

designed.

Because of the national importance of extending the life of the nuclear weapons in

the stockpile, in 1996, the Office of Defense Programs established the stockpile life

extension program, managed by the Office of Military Applications and Stockpile

Operations. Section 3133 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year

2000 requires the Secretary of Energy to carry out a program to provide for the

extension of the effective life of weapons in the nuclear weapons stockpile. As part

 3

 While a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would limit nuclear testing by participating countries

to extremely low levels, known as zero yield, was rejected by the U.S. Senate in October 1999, a

unilateral U.S. moratorium on testing that began in 1992 continues.
4 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

of the program, DOE (NNSA) is to develop and submit annually to the Congress a

long-term stockpile life extension program plan, which would:

• provide for the remanufacture, refurbishment, and modernization of each weapon

design designated for inclusion in the stockpile;

• expedite the collection of information necessary to carry out the program;

• ensure the appropriate assignment of roles and missions for each nuclear

weapons laboratory and production plant, workload allocation, modernization,

and retention of skilled personnel;

• allocate funds for activities by weapon type and facility; and

• identify the funds needed to carry out the program, for the current year and the

next 5 fiscal years.

The initial plan was to be submitted not later than January 1, 2000, with subsequent

updated plans submitted annually with the Department’s budget request. The act also

called for us to assess whether the program could be effectively carried out under

any plan submitted. In addition, Title 32 of the National Defense Authorization Act

for Fiscal Year 2000, which established the NNSA, mandated the use of sound

planning, programming, budgeting, and financial activities. In particular, it required

that NNSA submit to the Congress a Future Years Nuclear Security Program plan that

details NNSA’s planned expenditures for the next 5 years.

Our December 2000 report on NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program confirmed the

need for improved planning. We recommended that the Administrator, NNSA, direct

the Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs to ensure completion of a stockpile

life extension program plan containing all of the information required by the National

Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, especially information on plant

workload capacity and budget. In addition, we also recommended that the Stockpile

Stewardship Program’s planning efforts, including stockpile life extension planning,

be integrated with the program’s management controls and coordinated with the

budget planning and formulation process.

Interim Stockpile Life Extension Program Plan Was Incomplete

In May 2000, the Office of Defense Programs issued an interim stockpile life

extension program plan. However, as we reported in December 2000, the interim

plan was incomplete. The plan was essentially a detailed description of the weapon

life extension process. It included a multiyear stockpile work schedule for various

weapons, but it did not list all facilities to be involved for each weapon life extension,

or the nature or time frame for their involvement. As stated in our December 2000

report on the management of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, the plan did not:

• compile complete and current information necessary to implement the life

extension program, such as requirements for when, how, and to what extent key

weapons are to be refurbished;

• address potential plant production capacity issues; or
5 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

• include budget information.

In particular, we found that information used in the interim plan regarding plant

capacity was not complete. For example, Y-12 Plant capacity estimates for producing

certain weapon components at that site were not available because the Y-12 Plant did

not have a current, validated model for estimating plant capacity. The contractor at

the Y-12 Plant agreed on the need for such information and expected to develop a

complete and validated model in fiscal year 2003.

We also found that the interim plan did not address how to remedy potential plant

capacity shortfalls. For example, by 2016, Pantex Plant officials expect the beginning

of a 6-year period where workload may significantly exceed plant capacity for

performing a variety of scheduled weapon operations and tests. Although a draft

10-Year Site Plan for the Pantex Plant described these potential shortfalls, the interim

plan did not specifically address how to deal with them. In particular, it did not

establish activities and make firm commitments to modify facilities or hire and train

additional staff to prevent delays to the schedule. We found that the interim plan

neither projected budget needs for the program nor allocated funds either by weapon

type or by facility and that “without such basic budgeting information, managers in

the Office of Defense Programs cannot use the plan for budget decisions.”

In responding to our December 2000 report, the Office of Defense Programs

acknowledged weaknesses in its program planning and the need to supply the

information required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000.

At the time the interim plan was submitted, the Secretary of Energy committed to

providing the congressional defense committees with a final report by the end of

September 2000. However, according to the Deputy Administrator for Defense

Programs, this date could not be met because NNSA and the Department of Defense

had not made key refurbishment decisions, the Stockpile Stewardship Program was

going to be realigned, and programmatic and budget issues within the new NNSA

remained to be resolved. The Office expressed the hope that information on

stockpile life extension could be incorporated into the fiscal year 2002 budget

submission.

The Office of Defense Programs Did Not Complete a Comprehensive Plan to

Extend Stockpile Life to Accompany Its Fiscal Year 2002 Budget Request

Over the last year, NNSA has several times stated its intention to respond to the

congressional requirement by including pertinent information in the agency’s fiscal

year 2002 budget request.

• The Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, in a November 7, 2000, letter

commenting on our draft stockpile stewardship report, stated that the Office

would comply with the intent of our recommendation that NNSA complete a

stockpile life extension plan containing the information required under the act.

The Deputy Administrator stated that this information would be included as part
6 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

of the Directed Stockpile Work plans to be submitted with the budget request for

fiscal year 2002.

• The Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs wrote along similar lines to the

Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services, on January 10, 2001, raising the

prospect of incorporating stockpile life extension program needs in NNSA’s fiscal

year 2002 budget.

• Finally, the NNSA Administrator wrote to us on April 3, 2001, outlining his plans

to address the recommendations in our December 2000 report. He stated that

NNSA would incorporate the spirit of our recommendation to provide the

Congress with a stockpile life extension program plan in its fiscal year 2002

budget request and subsequent budget requests by providing supplementary

information on the stockpile life extension process, or “stockpile refurbishment

planning,” within the larger framework of the agency’s Directed Stockpile Work.

However, NNSA did not follow through on these statements. Nothing close to such a

plan was included in the fiscal year 2002 budget request submitted on April 9, 2001.

Instead, information on stockpile life extension in the budget was limited, often

generalized, and located in various places. The discussion of weapons refurbishment

under the Directed Stockpile Work budget program activity did not provide the

requisite overview. It did not present a coherent, multiyear picture of the status of

the effort, including—broken out by weapon type—information on (1) facility roles,

missions, and workload; (2) funding; and (3) schedules. Instead, activities related to

refurbishment of the B61, W76, W80, and W87 weapons could be found in any one of

four areas under the Directed Stockpile Work program activity. For example, under

the “stockpile research and development” category, refurbishment was listed as a

subcategory (with about $91 million requested for fiscal year 2002) and under the

“stockpile maintenance” category life extension operations, repairs, and maintenance

was listed as a subcategory (with about $247 million requested for fiscal year 2002).

Stockpile life extension activities were also mentioned in the “stockpile evaluation”

and “production support” categories.

The Office of Defense Programs Believes Other Plans Are an Adequate

Substitute for a Comprehensive Stockpile Life Extension Program Plan

While they agreed that the fiscal year 2002 budget submittal did not represent a

unified “cross cutting” overview of refurbishment, as the legislative requirement

envisions, Office of Defense Programs officials said they have no current plans to

complete a single stand-alone stockpile life extension program plan. Several officials

stated that the program’s budget submittal at least partially fulfilled the spirit of the

legislative requirement. They stated that they plan to include refurbishment activities

in the fiscal year 2003 budget submittal in a form similar to that in the fiscal year 2002

budget submittal. One official noted that the fiscal year 2003 submittal might not

change substantially from the previous year, other than that the funding numbers

would be updated. Some officials questioned whether such a plan was needed in the

form that the congressional requirement envisions, while another official said he was

unsure that the congressional requirement was still valid.
7 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

As support for their view that a stockpile life extension program plan may not be

needed, Office of Defense Programs officials cited existing documents and planning

initiatives under development that they believe cover the key aspects of a stockpile

life extension program plan--even though the documents and initiatives have not been

packaged into a single plan. With respect to existing documents, they noted that the

Office of Defense Programs annually issues a Production and Planning Directive that

spells out, among other things, refurbishment requirements as agreed to between

NNSA, DOD, and the weapons laboratories. They also cited procedural guidelines

that the Office of Defense Programs has developed for the refurbishment phase of the

weapons development and production life cycle—generally referred to as the “Phase

6.X Process.” As additional support for their position, the officials mentioned several

refurbishment-related planning initiatives that they are currently working on,

including:

• completing a Life Extension Program Management Plan for refurbishment of the

B61, W76, and W80;

• developing individual project plans to carry out the B61, W76, and W80

refurbishments; and

• developing five Directed Stockpile Work plans that cover refurbishment activities

related to several weapons, including the W87 and the three mentioned above.

We reviewed each of these documents and planning initiatives. While each is an

important contributor to effectively managing the life extension of the stockpile, they

do not, individually or collectively, meet all of the requirements called for in section

3133. More importantly, by spreading planning information across a variety of

planning approaches, the concept of integration—which is key to managing such a

complicated enterprise as life extension—is lost. Our analysis of each of the existing

documents and planning initiatives follows.

Production and Planning Directive: The Production and Planning Directive is a highlevel classified document that is used by the Office of Defense Programs and its

Albuquerque Operations Office to give annual planning guidance primarily to the

production facilities. While some areas called for in section 3133 are covered in the

directive, such as the overall schedule for a life extension, the directive does not

include the detail on such areas as roles and responsibilities for the various parts of

the complex needed to effectively manage the overall program. Nor is the directive

linked to budgets.

Phase 6.X Process guidelines: As a direct result of cost and schedule difficulties it

experienced with the W87 life extension program, the Office of Defense Programs,

for DOE, has established an agreement with DOD for future life extensions called the

Phase 6.X Process. The Phase 6.X Process guidelines, which were issued in October

2000, use the management framework that the Office of Defense Programs employed

for over 40 years to successfully design and build the nation’s nuclear arsenal and

applies them to the refurbishment process. The Phase 6.X Process agreement with
8 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

DOD requires DOE to produce a DOE Project Plan for each life extension.4 We

recognized in our December 2000 report on the management of the Stockpile

Stewardship Program that the Phase 6.X Process promised to improve the

management of future life extensions, through such management techniques as the

development of plans and cost and schedule estimates; however, with respect to

meeting the requirements of section 3133, the Phase 6.X Process is simply a set of

guidelines and not a comprehensive plan for conducting life extensions.

Life Extension Program Management Plan: To further strengthen the management of

individual life extensions, in February 2001, the Office of Defense Programs began to

develop an additional set of guidelines, known as the Life Extension Program

Management Plan. This plan is intended to support and expand on the Phase 6.X

Process guidelines and contains more detailed requirements for such key

management areas as roles and responsibilities; risk management; scope, cost and

schedule documentation; and interface needs among components of the weapons

complex. As drafted, the Life Extension Program Management Plan requires the

development of many of the elements called for in Section 3133 but only for

individual life extensions. It does not cover how the various life extensions will be

integrated across the complex. Moreover, the Life Extension Program Management

Plan has not been finalized. Initially, its completion was impeded by the inability of

the various components of the Office of Defense Programs to agree on roles and

responsibilities—a continuing management issue that we highlighted in our

December 2000 report. After approval within the Office of Defense Programs,

implementation of the Life Extension Program Management Plan has been delayed by

NNSA because of discussions concerning roles and responsibilities related to the

ongoing NNSA reorganization.

Individual life extension plans: Using the requirements contained in the Life

Extension Program Management Plan, program managers for the B61, W76, and W80

life extensions have begun developing plans, known as DOE Project Plans, for their

individual life extensions. The development of individual plans holds significant

promise to improve the management of individual life extensions, but not the overall

life extension planning effort. Moreover, these plans are far from complete.

According to Office of Defense Programs officials, the plan for the W80 could be

completed by late fall 2001; the plan for the W76 by the end of 2001; and the plan for

the B61 by early 2002.

Directed Stockpile Work plans: A final, more broadly scoped planning effort, to

develop five Directed Stockpile Work program plans, has been under way since May

2001. According to Office of Defense Programs officials, they believe this effort

addresses stockpile life extension planning. They said the effort involves

repackaging past stockpile work planning documents into five new plans that are to

match the budget program activity categories currently under Directed Stockpile

 4

 The DOE Project Plan, functioning as a program plan for the refurbishment will be drafted in Phase

6.2, Feasibility Study & Option Down-Select, and finalized in Phase 6.2A, Design Definition & Cost

Study. Advancement from one phase to another is controlled by the DOD-DOE Nuclear Weapons

Council.
9 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

Work. In this regard, as noted earlier, refurbishment is not one of the five program

activity areas, but rather a crosscutting set of activities. To obtain an overview of the

Office of Defense Program’s life extension efforts, it will be necessary to comb

through each of these plans.

In commenting on a draft of this report, NNSA also cited its efforts to develop a new

overall planning, programming, and budgeting process as a potential vehicle for

satisfying the requirements of section 3133. As noted earlier, Title 32 of the National

Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 mandates the use of sound planning,

programming, budgeting, and financial activities. It also requires that NNSA submit

to the Congress a Future Years Nuclear Security Program plan that details NNSA’s

planned expenditures for the next 5 years. Such a plan could contain some of the

elements required by section 3133.

Early in his tenure, the NNSA Administrator indicated that he intended to comply

with Title 32 by instituting a planning, programming, and budgeting process similar to

that in use at DOD. While DOD’s approach has not been without problems over the

past 40 years, it is generally recognized as a system that, when properly led and

staffed, is capable of making cost-effectiveness comparisons and of developing

detailed program and budget plans. The Administrator originally set a goal of having

NNSA’s version of DOD’s planning, programming, and budgeting process established

by the fiscal year 2003 budget cycle. Subsequently, this date was pushed back to the

fiscal year 2004 budget cycle because development was taking longer than expected.

NNSA has yet to submit a Future Years Nuclear Security Program plan to the

Congress. NNSA was required to submit its first plan for the fiscal year 2001-2005

period, but it failed to do so because the NNSA Administrator said he did not have

reliable data on planned expenditures that reflected recent congressional direction

and the new executive branch priorities. NNSA did produce a plan for the fiscal year

2002-2006 period, which was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget in

March 2001. The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the plan, pending

the soon-to-be-completed high-level reviews of the nation’s national security

programs, but it is unclear if the plan will be released to the Congress.

Integrated Planning Is Key to a Successful Overall Life Extension Effort

Extending the life of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile is a complicated

enterprise that requires each weapon life extension to use many of the same facilities

at the three design laboratories, the four production plants, and the test site. As a

result of this competition for scarce resources, integrated planning is needed not only

among the laboratories and plants but also among the several different weapon types

that are undergoing life extension at the same time. Although the B61, W76, and W80

life extensions are still in the planning phase, the consequences of the current nonintegrated approach have already begun to surface.
10 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

• One of the high risks facing the W76 life extension is the expansion of the Acorn

Production Line at the Kansas City Plant and the Acorn Loading Line at the

Savannah River Site. While the W76 life extension is planning on using the Acorn

technology as part of its effort, other life extensions are now considering using

the Acorn technology as well. This means that the Kansas City Plant and the

Savannah River Site currently do not have enough capacity to meet the potential

need for this technology. If the capacity is not expanded or if the other life

extensions do not change their desire to use the Acorn technology, the W76 life

extension’s schedule milestones could be in jeopardy.

• Officials at the Y-12 Plant told us that, on the basis of the production

requirements, they expected their workload to sharply peak in the near future,

then drop off. As a result, officials are seeking ways to “load-level” production

operations at the Y-12 Plant so that they can achieve a more consistent and

efficient use of the plant’s personnel, equipment, and facilities. To achieve the

load-leveling, Y-12 Plant officials believe they will need better integration of the

three planned stockpile life extensions across the complex.

• By 2016, Pantex Plant officials expect the beginning of a 6-year period where

workload may significantly exceed plant capacity for performing a variety of

weapon operations and tests. Although a draft 10-Year Site Plan for the Pantex

Plant described these potential shortfalls, the interim plan did not specifically

address how to deal with them.

• The W76 program manager told us that hydrodynamic testing was very important

to certifying the changes to the W76. A hydrodynamic test is a high explosive,

nonnuclear experiment to investigate aspects of the function of a nuclear weapon

primary. However, hydrodynamic tests are important to other life extensions as

well, especially the W80. The W76 program manager was concerned about how

effectively the hydrodynamic testing was being prioritized and who was doing the

prioritization. He believed this was an area where an integrated plan would help

identify and resolve issues.

• Each life extension will rely on the design and certification efforts of the design

laboratories. Many of these design efforts will be carried out under the various

Campaigns. However, no formal mechanism exists to ensure that the Campaigns

anticipate and meet the needs of the life extension efforts. This lack of a formal

mechanism was a significant concern to the B61, W76, and W80 program

managers.

Conclusions

A significant portion of the Stockpile Stewardship Program will be the effort to

extend the life of the nation’s nuclear stockpile. As the life extension program

expands in scope and individual life extensions begin to run concurrently in the first

decade of the 2000s, integrated planning will be needed more than ever to enable

effective prioritization among different weapon refurbishments. While the Office of

Defense Programs appears to be conducting better up-front planning for the B61,

W76, and W80 individual life extensions, the needed integrating mechanisms that an

overall stockpile life extension plan could provide are not now in place, and may not

soon be. As the Congress recognized in section 3133 of the National Defense
11 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, a comprehensive stockpile life extension

program plan that includes information on capacity, workload, and budget is vital to

successfully managing the integrated activities of the design laboratories and

production plants and to making well-informed decisions in a resource-constrained

environment. We continue to believe, as we recommended in our December 2000

report, that the Office of Defense Programs should develop a comprehensive plan,

not only to meet the legislative requirement, but also for effective program

management.

Agency Comments

We provided NNSA with a draft of this report for review and comment. NNSA agreed

with the need for integrated program planning, calling it a cornerstone of NNSA’s

ability to meet DOD’s expectations for the weapons life extension programs.

However, NNSA did not clearly state when, or if, it intended to comply with section

3133. While NNSA cited its recent efforts to develop a new planning, programming,

and budgeting system as evidence that it is moving toward meeting the requirements

of section 3133, a fully functioning process will not be available until the 2004 budget

cycle at the earliest. Moreover, NNSA stated that its ability to follow through and

demonstrate compliance with section 3133 will depend on its ability to reach

administration agreement on a multiyear budget like that contained in a Future Years

Nuclear Security Program plan. However, as we noted earlier, while NNSA did

produce a plan for the fiscal year 2002-2006 period and submit it to the Office of

Management and Budget in March 2001, it is unclear if this plan will ever be released

to the Congress. NNSA also provided technical comments, which were incorporated

as appropriate. NNSA’s comments are included as an enclosure.

Scope and Methodology

We performed our review from June through December 2001 in accordance with

generally accepted government auditing standards. To determine the status of the

Office of Defense Programs efforts to comply with the congressional requirement to

develop a stockpile life extension program plan, we talked to responsible NNSA and

Office of Defense Programs officials and examined pertinent documentation.

Specifically, we collected information on existing documents and planning initiatives

that could constitute such a plan and compared this information to the congressional

requirement. To better understand this information in the context of currently

expanding weapon refurbishment activities, we talked to key officials in various

offices including the Office of Stockpile Assessments and Certification; the Office of

Military Application and Stockpile Operations; the Albuquerque Operations Office

and its Weapons Program Division; and in particular to the project managers of the

scheduled B61, W76, and W80 weapon refurbishments.
12 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

We are sending copies of this letter to the Secretary of Energy, the Administrator of

NNSA, and the Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs. This letter will also be

available on GAO’s home page at http://www.gao.gov. If you have any questions

regarding this letter, please contact James Noel or me at 202-512-3841. Dave Brack

was a key contributor to this letter.

(Ms.) Gary L. Jones

Director, Natural Resources and

 Environment
Enclosure I

Comments From the National Nuclear Security Administration

13 GAO-02-146R Status of Planning for Stockpile Life Extension

(360131)